- News
Allegations of misconduct focus
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/cope-forum-4-december-2013-how-should-journal-deal-persistent">complainers as well as complaints) and individual cases. - News
Journal management focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/cases?f%5B0%5D=im_field_classifications%3A2778">COPE cases involving some aspect of journal management (108 cases are tagged as relevant to journal management), • the COPE flowcharts that offer practical guidance on the steps to follow when faced with a multiplicity of different ethical issues, • the COPE documents, - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2021
…legitimate for an editor to modify a reviewer’s comments. It also gives guidance on the level of editing and editing procedure which will support consistent, fair, and transparent editing practices. Peer Review Week, 20–24 September, is upon us once again. This year’s theme is the “multifaceted role of identity in peer review”. I’m sure many of you… - Case
Plagiarism of published paper
…his own institute about this case of unethical behaviour. This paper was first submitted to my journal in February 2010 and rejected on initial review by a different subeditor because it was missing many references and was incomplete. I could not find any other papers written by the other authors on the paper so I’m assuming they were probably students, with the last author the… - Forum discussion topics
What does peer review mean in the arts, humanities and social sciences?
…include adding non-native speakers to editorial boards to advise from a high level perspective in an important way; editors entering retirement offering mentorship outside the publication process; for society journals, pairing society members internationally with published mentors and see if they can meet the authorship criteria Post your comments and feedback below. - News
In the news: April 2018 Digest
…servers varied little from their final poublished versions, suggesting the commercial publishers’ added value is limitedhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1 Peer review fails to prevent publication of paper with unsupported claims about peer review A recent publication,… - News
Citations: Link, Locate, Discover, Connect
…target="_blank">http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jcr1975introduction.pdf [2] Cited references from the Book Citation Indexes were added as contributing materials to the JCR in 2018, and are included in the recently published 2017 Journal Impact Factors and other JCR metrics. The set of content whose citations are included in the JCR now comprise: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging… - News
Peer review focus
…come in. There are currently 73 cases tagged as addressing issues related to the peer review process. While there are certainly some unique issues that come up in publications, it’s likely you’ll find a similar problem to one you are addressing by perusing the cases. If not, you can always - News
In the news: August 2018 Digest
…one group of authors in Science showed that 1/5 respondents were coerced into adding citations and findings were similar in a study of PLOS ONE authors. The specter of citation cartels among participating journals—you scratch my back, I’ll cite your paper. The author of this post suggests that an automated algorithm, similar to what is used by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to detect… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars-and-webinars/dei-in-practice-panel">Driving diversity, equity, and inclusion to shape the future of publication ethics, COPE Seminar 2021 Diversifying editorial boards, article, 2021 Your comments Anyone (members and non-members) can comment on this discussion. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below.… - News
In the news: July Digest
…="_blank">https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/ugc-move-to-thwart-pay-and-publish-trash-culture/story-AP0BFFrbNuL1mN5WNbgCjI.html Peer review An experiment on peer review conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School, found that almost 50% of reviewers of medical funding applications changed their own ratings… - News
Conflicts of interest focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/e-learning">e-learning course for members has a module on conflicts of interest. Both members and non-members have free access to the 70 archived COPE Forum cases that are related to conflicts of interest. Some cases describe novel situations, such as possible conflicts of interest of an institution and funder ( - News
In the news: July 2021
…tenure decisions. This index can be gamed by excessive self-citation and there are instances of authors adding references at the revision stage of the peer review process after there is likely to be scrutiny of the reference list, producing in an “h-index factory“. The author proposes for these, and other reasons cited in the post, that the community of researchers and publishers need to “ - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…is not necessarily a sign of a paper mill submission but if there are other red flags, it can be useful. Some additional features have been added. The original features for the tool were to protect against reviewer fraud and a report would only be issued after peer review. A new setting (low, medium, high) can raise an alert if there is a high rate of submission from the same device. Would it be… - News
Intellectual property focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/cases?f%5B0%5D=im_field_classifications%3A2777">COPE Forum cases on intellectual property are two recent cases (18-01 and 18-04) of author use of a copyrighted research scale. For further reference on this topic, COPE has guidelines on how reviewers should handle manuscripts - News
Welcome new COPE members April-June 2019
Welcome to our new members who have joined COPE between April and June 2019. The new members have been assessed against criteria outlined in the Principles of Transparency and signing up to COPE shows that they intend to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the - News
Case Discussion: Lack of trial registration leads to new concerns about study conduct and ethical review/approval
…institution, who was not a co-author and wished to remain anonymous, informed the editors that the ethics committee named in the article did not exist at the institution. After not hearing back from the authors, the editors added a Comment to the article alerting readers of non-adherence to clinical trial requirements. The authors later said that ethics approval had been granted by another… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 2: COPE commentary
…knowledge to fully understand the capabilities and threats presented by AI. On the potential for personal information to make its way back into training data, for example, Dustin Smith (a self-declared ‘AI optimist’) was quite clear. Where LLMs are trained on closed data sets (that is, with no new information added to it over time), there is little risk of material submitted to it reappearing in… Membership application FAQ
…membership is accepted? When your application is accepted, you will receive an email confirming this. You will receive a link to COPE’s Member Handbook which details the benefits of being a COPE member as well as how to manage your membership. If membership fees are applicable, an invoice will be sent to you. Once your membership fees are paid, your journal details will be added to our…- Case
Mislabelling/duplicate images
…papers. On the poster article, because it involved 10 images, I also plan to include, with the correction, a statement to the effect that a committee was appointed by author X’s institute to investigate the mislabelling and that they found no evidence of malicious intent (I’m wary of the wording I use here). I also want to reprint the poster and send a copy of it to each of our print…